Media Reassurance

The magazine L’Étudiant publishes a study claiming that 83% of young people trust traditional media. But behind these reassuring figures lies a troubling absence of methodological rigour.

A barometer published for a professional trade show

On 4 November 2025, La Dépêche reported the results of a barometer published by the magazine L’Étudiant. This study was presented on the occasion of the Journalism, Marketing and Communication Trade Show, held on 8 November at the Newcap Event Center in Paris. This publication context is not insignificant: the barometer accompanies a promotional event designed to showcase journalism careers to young people.

The article reports that, according to this study, 85% of 15-20 year-olds consider that the profession of journalist fulfils a socially useful function by informing and raising public awareness. A large majority—83%—would place their trust in traditional media, far ahead of social networks, deemed reliable by only 8% of respondents. Generative artificial intelligence was identified by 59% of young people as a vector of disinformation.

The article also details the credibility criteria identified by respondents: fact-checking comes first (77%), followed by source transparency (69%). The media outlet’s reputation (46%) would weigh more heavily than institutional independence or that of journalists, cited by approximately one-third of those surveyed. These figures are presented as an objective reflection of what “young people think.”

A striking gap with field experience

What immediately strikes one when reading these results is a form of almost total disconnection from actual field experience. For over thirty-five years, I have been leading media and image education workshops with young people, in extremely varied institutional and sociocultural contexts: schools of all types, sociocultural organisations, Youth Judicial Protection programmes, media libraries, art centres, cinemas, in the street itself, and so on.

What I discover in my exchanges with these young people is the opposite of what this study claims to establish. I do not find that young people reject traditional media wholesale, but their relationship to information is infinitely more nuanced, more critical, more ambivalent. The article itself notes a contradiction: it observes that nearly half of young people get their news via social networks, while claiming that they only trust traditional media. This tension is not examined.

As Dominique Pasquier noted in her work on youth cultures, young people’s media practices are marked by tensions and contradictions that quantitative approaches struggle to capture (Cultures lycéennes, la tyrannie de la majorité, 2005). Young people’s relationship to media cannot be reduced to a percentage of “trust” or “distrust”: it is made up of constant negotiations, comparisons between sources, and peer discussions.

Methodological opacity as a symptom

The article in La Dépêche presents itself as journalistic objectivity incarnate. Yet it never mentions the data collection methods. What was the sample size? How were respondents selected? Through what channel was the questionnaire distributed? What was the exact wording of the questions? None of this information is provided.

Yet we have known since Pierre Bourdieu’s foundational work that “public opinion does not exist” as raw data that simply needs to be collected: it is always the product of a social and methodological construction (L’opinion publique n’existe pas. Les Temps modernes, n° 318, 1972). A respondent’s answer can vary radically depending on the situation in which they are placed: the wording of questions, the context of administration, and the relationship with the interviewer all shape the responses obtained.

This methodological silence allows situated results to be presented as if they were objective and universal truth. This is precisely what sociologist Alain Desrosières called the “social magic of numbers”: their apparent neutrality masks the choices and conventions that govern their production (L’argument statistique, 2008). The figure of 83% thus acquires a force of evidence that discourages any questioning of the conditions of its manufacture.

The school context and the social desirability effect

Let us imagine for a moment the likely design of this survey. It is probable that young people were questioned in a school setting, via a questionnaire transmitted by librarians or teachers, as the magazine L’Étudiant maintains close ties with educational institutions. They therefore probably responded under the gaze, or at least within the institutional context of school, where normative expectations are particularly strong.

Research on social conformity, since Solomon Asch’s pioneering experiments (Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. Groups, Leadership and Men, 1951), has amply demonstrated the power of normative pressures on individual responses. More recently, research on social desirability has shown that respondents tend to formulate answers that conform to what they perceive as socially expected, particularly in situations of institutional observation.

In the school setting, declaring trust in traditional media and distrust of social networks corresponds exactly to the expected discourse. The article also notes that 77% of young people advocate school awareness as a priority lever against disinformation. This response is consistent with the survey context: respondents value the institution in which they are questioned. Out of a completely natural need for social inclusion, young people probably answered what was expected of them. To answer otherwise would be to put themselves in social jeopardy. So what do these “results” really mean?

An acknowledged but unexamined ambivalence

The article itself acknowledges a form of ambivalence in young people’s relationship to media. It notes that 23% of respondents regret that the journalism profession is undervalued, and that 58% believe its influence has weakened in the face of the speed of content circulation. The relationship between young people and platforms is described as “ambivalent”: they use them massively for news while identifying them as the main vector of disinformation (75%).

But this ambivalence, once mentioned, is not analysed. How can we understand that young people massively use sources they claim not to trust? This apparent contradiction could reveal the difference between actual practices and declarative discourse—precisely what qualitative methods allow us to explore. Instead, the article juxtaposes figures without attempting to resolve the tension they reveal.

Young people’s concerns about artificial intelligence are also presented unequivocally: 75% would fear it will increase fake news, 68% would fear a dehumanisation of the profession, 67% a loss of critical thinking. But these concerns, expressed in a school context where the dominant discourse on AI is precisely one of mistrust, would merit being confronted with the actual uses young people make of these tools. Only 2% state that AI poses no major risk—a figure so low that it raises questions about the very possibility of expressing a dissenting opinion.

Critical thinking versus belief in authority

What saddens me most about this type of publication is the distortion of the very notion of critical thinking. The article presents as proof of critical thinking the fact that young people identify fact-checking and source transparency as guarantees of credibility. But adhering to an authoritative voice, even that of traditional media, has never constituted a form of critical thinking! It is, in fact, the exact opposite.

Critical thinking, in the philosophical sense of the term, refers to the ability to examine the conditions of knowledge production, to question assumptions, to suspend judgment in the face of unfounded claims. As Hannah Arendt reminded us, truly thinking requires resisting the temptation to produce immediate results and accepting the discomfort of questioning (The Human Condition, 1958). Yet this barometer does exactly the opposite: it produces reassuring certainties without examining the conditions of their production.

The editor-in-chief of L’Étudiant concludes by stating that this barometer reveals a youth « who do not merely consume information: they question it, prioritise it, and redefine its contours ». She adds that « journalism remains a compass, but it must reinvent itself in the face of new practices ». These formulations celebrate young people’s critical thinking while presenting journalism as their natural guide, without perceiving the contradiction between these two propositions.

A profession sick from its own lies

This type of article, assertive and methodologically opaque, reveals the extent to which a certain journalistic practice is sick from its own lies. By presenting as truth what is merely a viewpoint situated in an extremely specific context, it betrays the very mission of journalism: to illuminate reality rather than conform it to expectations.

There is something deeply ironic about seeing media outlets rejoice over a poll that attributes young people’s trust to them, without ever questioning the conditions under which this declared trust was produced. It is reassuring oneself about the belief of being connected to knowledge, without ever verifying the solidity of this connection. One commenter on the original article summarised it with clarity: « What a joke! It’s like an old advert: 100% of winners tried their luck. »

Young people who do not recognise themselves in this study face a dilemma. Either they conform, through social pressure, to this dominant discourse about what they are supposed to think. Or they radically oppose it—and rightly so—in the face of a radicality that presents itself as objectivity. In both cases, genuine dialogue—the kind that would allow them to be guided toward autonomous thinking—is compromised.

Accompanying rather than measuring

I do not claim that my own field experience constitutes an absolute truth. The way I engage in dialogue with young people, the spaces in which I meet them, the trust that can be established in our exchanges: all of this also influences what they tell me. But this reflexive awareness of my own observational situation is precisely what is sorely lacking in this barometer.

The real issue is not knowing what “young people” think—a question no survey can definitively answer, because “young people” in no way form a homogeneous group in their relationship to knowledge and culture. Rather, it is understanding how we, as adults, cultural and educational actors, can guide them toward greater critical thinking. That is, toward the capacity to think for themselves, with tools to be somewhat less dependent on the context in which they find themselves when formulating their opinions.

This is the true subject of media education: not instilling a pre-established trust or distrust toward this or that type of source, but developing the skills that allow one to evaluate, compare, and contextualise. In short, to think. This patient, dialogic work, attentive to concrete situations, cannot be reduced to the reassuring percentages of a barometer. The subject is sociological, anthropological, democratic. It concerns our collective capacity to welcome the diversity of relationships to the world, including those of young people. And it demands that media themselves practise the critical thinking they claim to celebrate in their readers.